


In Memory

by swtalmnd



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Decisions, Canonical Character Death, Dubious Consent, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swtalmnd/pseuds/swtalmnd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is numb after Sirius' death, and he thinks that Lupin might hold the answer to finding his feelings again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in January 2004, re-archiving for the ISF collection.
> 
> Thanks to kelex for nurturing the bunny, Kitten for encouraging it, ximeria for audiencing and Kel again for the beta.

Harry spent the weeks at Privet Drive in a state of numb shock, buffered from his relatives' indifferent cruelty by a complete inability to feel much of anything. He knew that there were things lurking, deep down, brewing into something horrid that was going to come crawling out at the least opportune moment. But the numbness came coupled with a sort of tired apathy that wouldn't allow him to care for more than a minute or two. All his grief, his rage and guilt and sorrow, it all felt distant and disconnected, like feelings that were happening to someone else.  
  
He didn't even get excited when, a few days after his sixteenth birthday, Professor Lupin and the usual Order honor guard showed up to take him to live at 12 Grimmauld Place for the rest of the summer. Harry just shrugged, and packed, and left. Even the news that he'd be able to do magic, now that he was of age and out of Muggle sight, was not enough to garner more than a limp shrug and a halfhearted smile.  
  
The long broom-ride made his body as numb as his brain, the cold seeping into his bones in a way that never quite left over the next few weeks. He went through the motions, eating at meals, showering and talking and pretending an interest, but he was fairly sure that there was something irreparably broken about himself, as nothing seemed to be able to touch him anymore, not inside where it counted.  
  
As the days wore on, he took to wandering the empty house aimlessly, avoiding Professor Lupin, who'd been given the care of him. He found himself up in the attic one day, the room as dusty as ever, being a low priority in the Order's long list of tasks to be accomplished. He crawled around amongst boxes that shuddered and mumbled and moaned, through a little tunnel that seemed just the size to admit a single clever boy. He wondered idly if Kreacher used to come here to escape Sirius' demands, and was unsurprised when the idea was met with the same numbness that blanketed the rest of his thoughts.  
  
At the end of the tunnel, he found a tiny room built of old boxes, trunks and even a dusty grandfather clock. Over by the filthy window there was a nest of sorts, containing a few odd quilts, a rather horrifyingly ancient-looking box of Bertie Bott's Beans, and a small, leather-bound notebook that looked suspiciously like a journal. Harry crept over to it cautiously, the memory of his last encounter with a mysterious diary calling up something like his old self-preservation instinct.  
  
The one thing he hadn't ever been allowed to forget was that he, Harry Potter, was destined to Save Them All, and mustn't ever, ever take unnecessary risks. These included but were not limited to, reading anything but his schoolbooks, leaving the house without at least three members of the Order and several Protection Charms, and, on one occasion, cutting his own meat up into bite-sized pieces. He wasn't even being allowed to help with the last bits of cleaning, for fear he get a terrible Doxy bite or something and pop off without any help from Voldemort at all.  
  
It was beginning to bore him even over the apathy, so this new thing, this possibly-a-journal, was a shining temptation which Harry was, at this point, ill-equipped to resist. He strode over and picked it up, dusting it carefully. He stared with a strange tightness in his chest as his fingers traced over the gold embossing on the front: a perfect dog's paw print, and the word "Padfoot" in a painfully familiar scrawl.  
  
With hands that trembled just slightly, and a heart that was, perhaps, finally beating just a tad bit faster than normal, Harry opened the book and began to read.

* * *

_2 April_  
__  
I can't believe it finally happened! After all this time, I finally cornered Moony and got him to admit he's a pouf in addition to being a werewolf. His lips were very soft, and I had no idea it was possible to do such things to another bloke with your tongue. I'm very glad Prongs and Wormtail stayed down in the common room quite late, as I'd have been mortified if they had come up and seen me begging like the dog I am for Moony to just bugger me already.  
  
Who knew he'd have his heart set on being buggered instead?  
  
I can't begin to describe how it felt, passing by all the fumblings in dark corridors and groping in classrooms I've done with girls and just getting naked and inside someone else. He was so tight and hot I almost embarrassed myself, honestly, but I thought of Snivellus' ratty grey pants and that did the trick. Still, it was brilliant, and honestly I think I'm in love anyway, so hopefully this won't be the last bit of shagging we do.

* * *

_15 April_  
  
Moony's skin is addictive. I'm learning all the ways of his body one by one. We had a long, leisurely afternoon in the Shack today instead of the usual hurried fuck. He's got this scar on his shoulder, like a moon itself, that he says is too deep and won't ever fade. I ache when I think of the things he used to do to himself before we were there, and lick it over and over. He's growing attached to it, he says, and I can't blame him. I'm going to memorize his skin before we're done, worship each and every scar until he can't remember why they were bad.

* * *

_17 July_  
  
I've given in and told Prongs. Now that I'm living with him, and Moony is coming to visit, I can't just let it go anymore. I was shocked when he started asking all kinds of detailed questions -- I'll have to ask Moony what's off limits, and warn him. Still, it could've been a lot worse. Sadly, even Prongs agrees that Wormtail is not to know, as he'd probably just bugger it all up anyway by giving the game up to someone in a fit of, well, him-ness.

* * *

_23 July_  
  
I can't believe I've missed him this much, but it's like having my hand back or something. Prongs' mum is having the two of us share a room, and it's like school all over again, all silencing charms and naked skin. He even smells like home to me. Afterwards, he laughed when I told him about Prongs' reaction. Bloody werewolf humour, I guess.

* * *

_25 July_  
  
Moony tells me Prongs has been grilling him as well, and hinting that he might like to have a go with us, just to see what it's like. Moony, surprisingly, is up for it. He says we share everything else, and it's not like Prongs isn't totally lost for Evans, so I know they're not going to run off into the night, but it still feels kind of weird. I think I'll just have to get Moony to bugger me until I agree. Off to implement plan!

* * *

_26 July_  
  
Prongs kissed me today, out by the shed. Moony came around a corner and I thought I might have a heart attack, but Prongs never even let up, the cheeky bastard. He tasted strange, like lemon sherberts and wind, instead of moonlight and loam like Moony's kisses. Of course, it still got me hard in about a microsecond, watching Moony lick his lips while Prongs licked mine. I think it might kill me, but I've agreed. At least I'll die well-fucked.

* * *

Harry closed the journal, not quite ready to read about how his father had had a kinky three-way experiment with his godfather and his Dark Arts professor. His chest ached dully, and his throat was tight, and he was mildly shocked to find that he was hard, prick tangled painfully in his jeans. He adjusted himself, biting back a moan at the brush of his hand. Tossing off was another thing he'd given up on lately, lacking in anything like the motivation.  
  
It looked like he'd just found it.

* * *

_28 July_  
  
We did it. I refuse to ever do it again, no matter how curious Prongs gets, if only because it was too good to ever repeat. We decided to give him the full experience, buggering Moony while I buggered him, and it was amazing. It was like I was shagging Moony through him, like some sort of weird living, talking -- moaning, more like -- sex toy. Incredible, really. His skin was so hot, like Moony's the night before a change, but smoother than I'd ever imagined. Even his legs are barely hairy, what a contrast. The grip of his body was tight, too, reminded me of that very first shag, nervous and unsure on the surface, but his body kept holding on to me like it didn't want to let me go every time I pulled out. Oh god, I hope Moony never reads this. Bugger it all.

* * *

Harry came, silently, into the tissue he'd got ready just for that purpose. He'd almost used a sock like Ron did sometimes, but somehow Dobby had put him off socks forever, at least in any sexual capacity. He couldn't believe how vivid his godfather's words had been, the image it had called up in his head. His own father, buggered by his godfather, while buggering the only one of them left, his current guardian.  
  
Harry shook his head, feeling the numbness settle back in. He was one fucked up boy.  
  
That didn't stop him from using the book as a tool to fuel his fantasies, hell, just to make him feel something other than numb, apathetic and bored. He went through the first half of the book in a few days, going back to the beginning and reading over every single entry with intense concentration. After that, he started to parcel the entries out, reading only until something made him climax -- Sirius never seemed to write about much other than shagging Lupin, for which Harry was weirdly grateful.  
  
He reached the end of the entries only a few days before school was supposed to start, only halfway through what he'd been thinking of as his farewell wank. Ron and Hermione would be here soon, and he didn't want to get caught, after all. He flipped idly through the book, stroking himself in vague frustration, unable to achieve anything like real arousal without Sirius' words to drive him. He came across another chunk of writing near the back of the diary, and settled in to read with a satisfied grunt.

* * *

_15 October_  
  
Can't believe I found this old thing, still shoved in a corner of the Shack. It's a miracle Moony never ran across it during a change, but I guess I had it hidden well enough after all. Wouldn't do to let him see how much I felt for him, really. Everything seems so distant now, the memories numbed by time and worn thin by those bloody Dementors. I missed Moony the most, I think, more than air or light or decent food. Too bad he's the one thing I don't think I'll ever get back.

* * *

Harry blinked. The handwriting had changed subtly, becoming shakier, messier. He sat back, hand falling away from his trousers as he realized that Sirius had begun writing in it again after he'd gotten out of Azkaban. He skimmed a few random passages, then flipped to the end, noting the date, blinking back something suspiciously like real feelings as he read the final entry.

* * *

_28 May_  
  
I'm going crazy, staying inside like this. I can't move or think or do anything, and the old numbness creeps in, like my mind's lost the instinct for proper living from 12 years in that hellhole. The only thing that makes me feel again is Moony, the scent of his skin and the feel of his body, and even that's denied me when he goes out on missions for the Order. It seems kind of pathetic to be whingeing that my sex life is being ruined by You Know Who, but no one'll ever read this but me, so sod it.  
  
Still, I can't wait until he gets back, so I've got another voice that's real, a face that's not my own. So I can taste him, drown in the smell of outdoors that he carries with him all the time now. Moony makes me alive again, where nothing else can now that Harry's off to school and no one lets me see him anymore. I hate that they've taken it all away from me again in the name of the Greater Good, just when I'd found that my godson had grown into a real person, just when I'd found purpose and life and Moony again.

* * *

Harry felt something sweep over him, a kind of desperately hopeful lust. Professor Lupin had been with Sirius before he died, had been with Harry's father back before he died, he was the one thread that connected them all. It was Sirius' words that got him off, yes, but it was Lupin's image, Lupin's skin and tongue and ass and cock that were being described by those words. It was Lupin who somehow held the key to finally being able to feel again.  
  
Harry slipped out of his bed, not bothering to do up his trousers. He'd only be taking them off again.  
  
He padded down the hall, barefoot and shirtless and cool, forgotten diary held loosely in one hand. Everyone else was gone, preparing for start of term, with only Lupin left to watch over poor ickle Harry and his emotional issues. Well, Harry was about to bring those issues to his doorstep, and lay them down in no uncertain terms. He felt something burning in his chest as he reached Lupin's door, and realized with a shock that it was anger.  
  
Well, it was a start.  
  
He didn't bother to knock, just opened the door and closed it behind him, moving into the darkened chamber on silent feet. His trousers slipped lower on his hips, prick leading the way as it jutted out of his pants, hard and defiant. He could just make out the dark shape of the bed on the other side of the room, and he moved closer as his eyes adjusted until he was standing over it, staring down.  
  
Lupin was obviously not a quiet sleeper -- his covers were mostly shoved off to one side or wrapped firmly around one ankle, and his nightshirt was half-unbuttoned and pulled down to expose one thin, scarred shoulder. Harry shed his trousers, eyes never leaving that small bit of pale flesh, devouring it hungrily with his eyes the way Padfoot used to devour chicken back in Fourth Year.  
  
The emotions were growing thick, now, admiration for Lupin as a person, as a professor, a violent jealousy that he'd gotten so much of Padfoot and Prongs, Sirius and even James bloody Potter. Anger that he hadn't somehow kept Sirius out of the fight, kept him from falling gracefully through that archway and into oblivion. Guilt, heavy, shameful guilt, both for his own role in Sirius' death, and for what he was about to do. But most of all a blinding red lust that made his skin sing and his body throb with life.  
  
Harry dropped the diary onto his discarded clothing and climbed into the bed, kneeling naked beside his former teacher, sliding his hands up deliciously parted thighs. Lupin -- Moony, Harry corrected himself -- moaned in his sleep and let them fall open further, frowning a little at the one ankle still tangled in the sheets. "Sirius," he said softly, growing hard even as Harry's bold hands exposed him to the cool night air.  
  
Sirius had been right, Harry thought. Moony was the cure, the secret. Harry leaned in, running his tongue along the deep shoulder scar that Padfoot had waxed poetic on in one of the earlier passages, thrilled at finding that Moony tasted just as described. His skin was salty and earthy, like good forest loam, and smelled strangely of moonlight. Harry inhaled deeply, ghosting nose and lips over fragrant flesh. His hands worked the nightshirt up as far as it would go, smoothing young fingers over skin full of memories.  
  
Moony's eyes fluttered open as Harry was leaning in, brown and sad and confused even as Harry's lips met his in a gentle, chaste kiss. Moony's eyes went wide, and his hands came up to shove Harry away roughly. "Bloody hell, Harry, what...?"  
  
"Please, Moony, I need it so badly," said Harry softly, moving back in, hands automatically seeking places made strangely familiar by Sirius' vivid words. There was an odd squiggling scar, just there, a bite mark on in his calf that had been strangely warped when he changed back to merely human. It was crossed by a new set of three white lines, and Harry frowned at the thought that he'd spent twelve long years without Padfoot or the potion to keep him from harming himself.  
  
"What are you on about, and why on earth are you in my bed naked?" Moony sounded almost panicked as Harry's hands drifted up his legs, finding unerringly that spot at the inside of his thighs that Padfoot had written always worked at turning him from homework to more entertaining pursuits.  
  
"I need to feel, you did it for Sirius, you made him feel again, he said so, please, Moony, I just want to feel something again," Harry was babbling, he knew, but his nimble fingers were smoothing down Moony's resistance, chipping away at his resolve.  
  
Harry growled when Lupin moved away, pulled down the nightshirt to cover his most vulnerable spots. "No, Harry! I will not... I can't... You're sixteen, for fuck's sake!"  
  
"You were old enough, weren't you? To shag Sirius! To shag my dad!" Harry was shaking with frustration and anger, lust and need. His blood pumped through his veins as he yelled, hands balling into fists.  
  
"That's not the point, I'm old enough to be your father, Harry," said Moony in an irritatingly reasonable tone.  
  
"My father's dead! My mum and dad and even my godfather, you're all I've got left of them, aren't you? You knew him, knew them both like this, and I just want... I just need to feel... to feel close to him again." To Harry's horror, he began to sob, huge, shuddering things that shook his whole world. "I just want to feel something that he felt, Moony."  
  
"Not like this, Harry. This isn't the way!" Lupin sounded desperate, and a small, triumphant part of Harry saw through his tears that Moony's erection hadn't flagged in the least.  
  
Some part of Lupin wanted this, wanted Harry in his bed, and Harry's voice was tight with righteous anger as he screamed, "What the fuck would you know? Nothing's ever normal for me, why should this be? Why can't I just have one thing the way I want it?"  
  
Harry took advantage of Moony's stunned silence to crawl up into his lap, straddle him and kiss him again, fierce and vicious even through the tears that wouldn't stop falling. He tilted his hips, rubbing them together and moaning into Moony's mouth as the worn fabric of the nightshirt slid over his cock. He'd been halfway to done before he finished the diary earlier, and now he felt harder than he'd ever been, hot and heavy and filled with need.  
  
"Let me in, Moony," said Harry softly, echoing the words he'd seen Padfoot use. Moony moaned helplessly and returned the kiss, tangling his fingers in Harry's permanently mussed hair. Harry made quick work of the nightshirt, breaking the kiss only long enough to throw it out into the room where it couldn't get in his way again. His hands traced paths long familiar to his godfather, finding the spots that Sirius loved best about his lover and touching them reverently with his own fingers.  
  
Another sob hitched in his throat when Moony's fingers trailed down his back, wrapped around his waist and lifted him up, laying him out on his back with his head on the tangled blankets at the foot of the bed. Harry spread his legs in anticipation, willing to take whatever Moony had to offer, even the act that had been rare for Sirius. Instead, Lupin leaned back on his heels and just looked at him for long, still moments.  
  
"You're so much like James, you know," he said softly, tears glistening like dew on his dark lashes. "I loved them both, but James was never ours to keep."  
  
"I'm yours now," said Harry, reaching out to him, inviting. They both made strange noises, grief and lust shaping something halfway between moan and howl when Moony leaned in and covered Harry's body with his own. This was strange, new territory, a thing that Sirius had barely described on the few occasions he'd done it. Moony on top, touching, exploring, tasting. His skin felt cool against the heat of Harry's cock, and his face was wet where it rested, briefly, on Harry's shoulder.  
  
"I won't be allowed to keep you," he murmured, so quietly that Harry thought he might have misheard. His arms wrapped all the way around, lifting Harry off the bed and squeezing him tight, as though he feared that Harry were an illusion, or a phantom. Harry held on, squeezing back, giving in to his own fierce need to touch, hold, to reassure himself that they were both, in fact, quite real.  
  
Harry had no words left, drowning instead in Padfoot's, and he substituted kisses that tasted faintly of mint and leaves and wilder things, the copper tang of blood and the bitter salt of grief. He rolled them over, putting Moony on his back, lying between those long, slender legs. He'd hit his growth somewhat, and was surprised to find he was almost as tall as his teacher now. He suppressed that thought with a shudder, instead nipping at Moony's collarbone just to feel the places where Padfoot's teeth had loved to be.  
  
"Bugger me," said Moony softly when Harry bit down at the juncture of neck and shoulder, just hard enough to leave a mark where Sirius' mark had so often caused Moony to be careful of his collars.  
  
"That's the idea," said Harry teasingly, in a tone so achingly familiar even to him that he nearly looked over his shoulder for Sirius' ghost. They'd teased each other like this once or twice where Harry could hear, not for sex but just out of gentle affection. Something else swelled up in Harry's chest, something warm and painful, and he silenced it with kisses that devoured and promised and lied.  
  
Moony's legs fell open, and his hand fumbled towards something Harry couldn't see. "Need m'wand. Spell."  
  
Harry's chest contracted. One of the stranger entries had included the story of Moony trying to teach the spell to Padfoot, neither of them able to concentrate long enough for him to ever actually learn it properly. In the end, it had been decreed that it was Moony's task to take over once things got to that point. Sirius' task had always been to get them there, convincing his shy lover over and over again to give himself to desire, to Sirius.  
  
He fumbled on the nightstand for Lupin's wand, pressing it into the waiting hand. Moony moaned as Harry traced nervous patterns over his thighs, finding new and old scars distressingly close to their apex and Moony's glistening cock. Moony muttered the spell, his accent soft and slurred, and spread his legs wide. Harry's hands slid upwards of their own volition, gasping in awe and wonder as he found slickness in that secret place behind Moony's balls.  
  
He slid a finger inside, feeling that same tight heat that Padfoot had so often described, biting his lip to keep from coming as the silken flesh seemed reluctant to let him go. He brought to mind a passage that he'd read so many times it seemed etched into his brain, where Sirius had described in loving detail the process of preparing Moony. A second finger joined the first, and Moony moaned just like the journal had predicted. Harry's cock twitched in sympathy.  
  
He slid those two fingers in and out, hypnotized by the new sensations flooding his mind, filling in the true meaning behind Sirius' often vague writings. That thing in his chest fluttered again, and Harry wondered if it was love or pain or something he'd never heard of before. When Moony cried out, "Sirius!" Harry knew it was time for the final act.  
  
He slid his fingers out, grasped his cock, already slick from the spell, and positioned it at Moony's entrance. "Tell me if I hurt you," said Harry, the words flowing past in Sirius' scrawled writing. He felt as though the diary was being etched on Moony's skin, each memory laid out for him to read, feel, be. He felt fresh tears on already wet cheeks as he slid inside, stopping to catch his breath when they were finally joined.  
  
He rested his forehead against Moony's, wondering how he'd ever thought of him as anything other than this beautiful creature beneath him, this incubus, seductive and writhing and moaning his dead godfather's name. Harry captured those traitorous lips in a sweet, hot kiss, unable or unwilling to correct him, when they both knew this wasn't about the future or even the present. The past lay in bed with them, overlaying each gesture with its own arcane meaning.  
  
Moony's legs came up to wrap around Harry's waist, and he moved his hips finally, slipping in and out of the moment, Moony's body, and his role. Padfoot rode him as much as he rode Moony, grief and loss and pain driving him into the willing flesh beneath him. Harry reached down, fingers playing over Moony's length, unable to feel the newness of it in the wake of memories.  
  
Sirius had, near the end of the diary, loved to describe Moony's cock and the things he'd learned to do with and to it, the sounds that would result from each practiced stroke. Harry felt something building inside him, everything he'd denied since Sirius' death balling itself up and sliding down his spine white-hot, exploding out from the center of him to crack his chest, spill his bleeding heart upon the floor as his seed spilled into Moony's body.  
  
He barely noticed Lupin coming, too, he was so wrapped up in the catharsis of it. When this overwhelming flood of feeling had run out, he was surprised to find that there was still something left. He found himself laughing softly, aware even then of the tinge of Sirius in the ironic, defeated tone. "Oh god, Moony, what have we done?"  
  
James had said these same words when they were done. Padfoot had written about it later, after Azkaban, after reading his old entries. He'd sounded so wistful at the memory, the words had tugged at Harry's heart then. Now, they just felt right, old and worn and familiar like the bed, the house, the man beneath him. Moony's arms came up to hold him, cradling Harry's face in the crook of his neck as he cried softly, sniffling and giggling. "We've royally buggered up, is what we've done, Harry."  
  
Harry nuzzled his neck, snuffled at the scent so achingly familiar. Sirius had been here, James had been here. Love lived here. Harry yawned as lassitude overcame him, settling into his bones along with new sense memories and old emotions. "Can we sleep before we panic, Moony?"  
  
Moony's laugh was bitter and rich, like good strong tea. "Yes, Harry. Let's sleep." He muttered a couple of spells and Harry felt the warm wetness between them vanish, although some slickness remained where they were still joined. Covers disentangled themselves enough to settle over them, and Harry drifted off to sleep feeling warm, and sad, and loved, but most importantly just feeling.


End file.
